Category Archives: Bottlecap

With a pinch of sorrow I write my last haiku tonight—the last for 2017. I will write another year’s worth of haiku, but not next year. I went out again and captured some of what’s going on in Vermont.

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This was a blind photo, as I had to stand on my tiptoes and hold the camera as far over my head as I could—a couple scrogglings with their caps of snow.

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Despite the cold, which tonight may almost reach -30 below, winter is never so beautiful.

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The sun doesn’t have it itself to melt the snow that caps the branches, apples still dangling from the tree (all with their little winter’s caps), or the limbs of the evergreens.

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traveling····whichever way—the Milky Way and horizon········meet·

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The wind-raked icicles on my house. Though they’re charming, they’re a bad sign. They mean that you’re losing too much heat through a poorly insulated roof. That’s something I’ll fix this summer or next. If the windows look like they’re leaning, that’s because they are. The house was built in the 1810’s and the wall was farmer-built, braced to last as long as the farmer, not for 200 years. The wall twisted and all the window openings with it. When I put in the new windows, I reasoned it was the character of the house. That’s how the house wants them. And that’s how you will always know an old house from a modern reproduction. To really reproduce the old colonial houses, a builder needs throw out his levels. Then, when all the clapboard’s are out of tune, the roof a little out of sorts, and the windows not quite right, you’ll know the reproduction was done good.

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And to the left is a little bit of a playground I rescued. These climbers were headed for the metal scrap. Couldn’t bear that. I had them brought to my back yard with a front loader and my girls played and played on them—and still do just a little. A house with children is the right place for them to retire.

The temperatures tonight are expected to approach -20 Fahrenheit. The coldest it’s gotten at my house, while I’ve been here, is -35; though it might have gotten colder during my teen-aged years elsewhere in Vermont. All in all, we’re having a true New England winter—startling, beautiful and unforgiving.

Another several inches fell last night. We’ve already had nearly as much snow as the last two winters combined. With the icy nights arriving, none of the snow is melts from the trees. The mountains are beautiful—green pines shimmering under layers of snow and the black trees glitter.

A little piece of our house, the original old barn that later became the connector between the original farmhouse, left, and the larger barn, right. The barn later turned into a second house. This is the way Vermont houses grow over a hundred years and more.

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And an abandoned house a little ways south of us. There’s something in me that imagines secretly putting a Christmas tree in the house and lighting it up on Christmas Eve, as if to give the house a little memory of what it once meant to a family.

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And a look through the window into the kitchen. You can see some shelves with bottles still on them.

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We in the United States, as in any other country, aren't always represented by who governs us. So long as you afford to others the dignity and respect for life and liberty you would afford yourself, it doesn't matter to me where you're from, what language you speak or what truth you believe in. You're welcome here.

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Patrick Gillespie has self-published one book of Poetry and edited nothing besides. His poetry and criticism has been firmly ignored and hasn't been translated into a single language. Gillespie has never been a Poet Laureate (let alone a Poet Laureate of the Blogosphere), a Literary Fellow of the National Endowment of the Arts, or a Fellow of the Vermont Arts Council. He has received no prizes from the Poetry Foundation (or any other poetry related organizations) and the devil reportedly worries that Hell will freeze over if he ever receives anything like a Genius Grant from the MacArthur Fellows Program. He has been firmly rejected by any and all publishers. No plaques have been or will be dedicated to him or his poetry. Gillespie has received no recognition or prizes of any kind. He holds zero academic credentials or titles. In short, Gillespie is just like you -- of little to no importance to all but a few. You have no reason whatsoever to read him. He wears bottle-cap glasses, works as a Carpenter, has three daughters and a good sense of humor. He is currently replacing all the bad windows in his Vermont home.